On the Functions of the Situational Teaching Methodology in Primary School Classes情景教学法在小学课堂上的作用20.doc

谈情景教学法在小学课堂上的作用On the Functions of the Situational Teaching Methodology in Primary School Classes摘 要随着英语在小学阶段的开展，教学改革的推进，很多科学而又有效的教学方法展现在课堂教学中。情景教学法就是一种新颖且极又效果的教学方法。情景教学法强调语言学习的真实情景。通过创设语言学习的情景，以情景为中心，培养学生的听说能力。由于其强调语言和环境的结合，可以增强学生对语言的感性认识。小学生理解能力不高但擅长对感性认识的记忆 ,因此情景教学法非常适合教授小学生尤其是低年级学生学习语言时使用。目前，我们不少老师在日常的英语教学中仍然自觉不自觉的使用传统的填鸭式教学，课堂气氛沉闷，学生被动接受。这种教学根本不适合小学生的心理和年龄特征，使学生产生厌烦心理，从一开始就不愿意和英语打交道，继而学好英语成了一句空话。再者缺少语言习得和使用环境，是中国学生外语表达能力差的一个重要因素。因此在英语教学中，教师应该给学生创设一种学“母语”的英语学习氛围，进行非常必要的“情境教学”。教师一定要想方设法，创造各种语言学习环境，让学生亲身体验，理解不同情境所表达的信息和语言材料，激发他们表达思想的欲望，在情境学习中锻炼运用语言的能力。关键词：小学英语；情景教学法；学生特征；作用AbstractWith English carrying out in primary schools and teaching reforms promoting, lots of scientific and efficient teaching methods appear in classroom teaching. Situational teaching methodology is a novel and effective teaching method.Situational teaching methodology which emphasizes the real scene of language learning cultivate students listening and speaking abilities by means of creating the scene of language learning and regarding the scene as the center. As the result of its combination of language and environment, situational teaching methodology can enhance students perceptual understanding of language. For students are not good at understanding but adept in keeping perceptual knowledge in mind, situational teaching methodology is quite suitable to pupils especially the lower grades to study language.At present, many teachers in our daily English teaching still use, consciously or unconsciously, the traditional “Spoon-feeding Teaching” method, which makes the class boring and students passively accepted knowledge. This teaching method does not fit the pupils characteristics of their mentality and age. It would cause students to have the bored feeling from the beginning and not want to learn English. In addition it is a important factor of Chinese students poor English for lacking of acquisition and use of the foreign language environment. Therefore it is essential that teachers should create the “mother-tongue” environment for students in English teaching. Teachers must try to establish various kinds of environment and let students experience them and understand different contexts and information expressed in language atmosphere. It will stimulate their desire to express thoughts and promote the ability of learning language in situational environment.Key words: Primary English; Situational teaching methodology；Students characteristics；FunctionContents 摘要 .iAbstract iiI. Introduction .1.The Basic Theory of Situational Teaching MethodologyThe principle of interaction between emotional and cognitive activities The intuitive principle of understandThe similar principle between thinking and scienceHuman's awareness is the process of combining conscious and unconscious mental activitiesHuman's cognitive process is the process of uniting non-intellectual factors and mental factors (or rational activity and emotional activity).The Importance of Situational Teaching Methodology1. It helps to develop and enhance students' interest in learning English2. It helps to cultivate students' practical ability to use English3. It helps students to master knowledge and comprehending the difficulties 4. It suits primary school pupils' physiological and psychological characteristics.The Use of Situational Teaching Methodology1. Pay attention to teacher-student interaction2. Stimulate students' problematical awareness3. Guide students to discuss properly4. Assess timely.The Principles of Creating Teaching Scene1. Purposive principle2. Illuminable principle3. Multiform principle.The Foundation and Significance of the Application of Situational Teaching Methodology in Primary School English TeachingFoundation: 1. from the students' psychological characteristics 2. from the structure of textbook 3. from the standard requirements of new curriculums in EnglishSignificance： To reduce the difficulty of teaching to facilitate problem-solving (2) To reduce the degree of fatigue to make students maintain good momentum in learning English (3) To stimulate, maintain and improve students' interest in learning effectively so that students will participate in teaching activities actively.How to carry on Situational Teaching Methodology to foster students' self-learning ability1. Set up the language scene of listening and speaking2. Create visual scenes3. Create a successful scenario 4. Establish the peripheral environment around campus to expand the second classroom.ConclusionBibliography .Acknowledgements . IntroductionForeign language teaching has a history of about 500 years in Europe. During this period various teaching methods succeeded one after another owing to different social and historical backgrounds. English teaching in China also has a long history of more than 100 years. After the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, especially since the practice of the policy of reformation and opening, many western schools of teaching methodology have been introduced to China together with the introduction of advanced western science and technology. That has led to the prosperity of English teaching in China to a great extent. Moreover, English teaching as an industry has made rapid progress during the past few years. All sorts of methodologies have been applied to the English teaching. That has contributed much to the overall improvement of national English level.However, it cannot be denied that the proper teaching approach in primary school English teaching process has been greatly neglected. The traditional Chinese “cramming method of teaching” is still play a leading role in our country. As is known to all, the status of English as an international language and a major medium in the Information Age is more and more prominent in the 21st century. So to start the English education from primary school students has become necessary. Furthermore, it is a national step to make such a start because English education is a systematic project whose different stages are linked with one another just like the rings on a chain. On this chain, primary school is the special ring for it is the starting point and foundation for others. Therefore, whether it is stable or not will certainly be related to the effect of the whole chain. Childhood is the ideal phase to acquire a native or foreign language. So it is vital to start English teaching in primary school. At the present time, the question “how to teach English course well in primary school” is the issue we follow closely. The quality of English teaching cannot be greatly improved if we still confine ourselves to traditional teaching method. Therefore optimizing primary English teaching method will become one of the great steps leading to successful teaching. Flexibility plays a crucial role in language teaching because it is closely related to many factors, such as learner, textbook and environment or other things. Therefore, in practical teaching it is impractical to say that a certain language teaching method is permanently effective. Teaching methods should vary from person to person according to different teaching parameters. Although there are many teaching approaches available, we still find it difficult to achieve satisfactory results in primary school English teaching. Then it remains an important thing to improve the existing teaching methods. As researchers in the field of primary school English teaching, we are duty-bound to exert ourselves to grope for the most appropriate English teaching method.The English situational teaching method of primary school, according to psychological characteristic of students, offers as many as possible chances to carry on the exercises in English for students through opening various informative situations, such as conversation, the song, the game, tongue twister, etc. At the same time teacher can get support from some audio-visual aids to arouse students interest, make them study in the happy and unrestrained atmosphere using knowledge freely and being interested in learning.Bloomfield also thinks “the successful foreign language classroom instruction should establish a great many situations in the lesson, let students have opportunities to use the language materials that have already been learnt.” These have fully reflected that characteristics of children naivety and activeness. Stressing the practicality of the language and making students practice time and again help students to consolidate the memory of the language. The traditional English teaching methods, “Duck-stuffing” and “translates from English to Chinese”, not only make the atmosphere of the classroom depressive but also have the students accept the knowledge passively, and moreover they dont fit for the pupils psychology and age characteristics at all. So the students are unwilling to go on learning English. In order to change this phenomenon, we can adopt the corresponding interesting and intriguing means based on the different contents of courses to excite students interest to study English. In China, English is taught as the second language in most of the schools. Many parents pay more attention to the English education of their children. They ask their babies to learn this kind of language when they are very young. At the same time, many teachers have their own teaching methods. But to be a fact, situational teaching method is a method which is common and practical in our daily teaching.This thesis is one of the many attempts aimed at the goal to enable to students learn English effective and be willing to learn English. Hereon, I endeavor to propose the situational teaching methodology as an ideal English teaching approach and make a further step to inquire into its practice in primary school English teaching. II. Literature ReviewThe situational teaching method was established and prevailed in England from 1930s to 1960s. In the 1970s, it was introduced to China and well-known in the foreign language field. The widely known “New Concept English” was taught in this method.The basic requirement of situational teaching method is to fully motivate students sensory organs to apperceive the objects to be learned through seeing, hearing even touching them. The American applied linguist Krashen put forth the theory of “Input Hypothesis” in his acquisition theory of second language learning. He considered that acquisition could be formed on the basis of comprehensive language input and the reason why the input could be understood was the help of context. Hence we can know that Krashen emphasized on the external language environment. In terms of the relationship between the language and cognition, both the organs of language and the development degree of humans brain provided the physiological foundation for people learning language, while the rich cultural and social environment offered the favorable conditions for the acquired language learners (Fang Junming, 1992). In the process of learning English, the teachers leading role is to build up a bridge between the two, while this effective bridge is language environment. The good way to create the language environment is undoubtedly the situational teaching method. Just as Krashen proposed, the input of language must be in quantity and the goal was to influence the learners in the rich language environment (Krashen, 1982).The Czech educationist J.A. Comenius regarded “all the things should be close to the sensory organs as much as possible within the probable scope”. He demonstrated the necessity of intuitional instruction on the basis of sensualism. At the same time, he advocated to “utilize all the potential means to arouse childrens the desire of seeking knowledge” in order to enhance students proactivity and consciousness.The American linguist William Dwight Whitney(18271894) believed that “language is the symbol which can be spoken out and heard. We regard language as a system; just the similar systems constitute the culture of a community”. Whitney held on to the arbitrariness of symbols in order to emphasize that the language was indeed a system. “There is a fact which can prove that well. For an object, behavior or peculiarity, how many kinds of language there are, how many names there would be. And that every name could fulfill its task”. (Whitney, 1875) That the situational teaching method views language as a structure and a well-regulated system is deeply influenced by structuralism.The main theory of behavioral psychology is stimulus-reaction theory. Burrhus Frederic Skinner(19041990) was one of the initiators of new-behavioristic psychology. He classified them to two kinds: “one type is responsive behavior which is the reaction caused by the known stimulus; another type is operational behavior which has nothing to do with any known stimulus. It is the reaction that the organism itself generates.”(Skinner, 1953) Correspondingly the conditional reflex was divided to respondent conditioning and operant conditioning. In teaching process, if the students answer correctly, teacher would praise or smile at him/her, which is like the white rat in Skinner box got food in the trial; if the students answer wrong, teacher may criticize or frown at him/her, which is like the white rat got electric shock. In this way the students will gradually form the right codes of language.The celebrated linguistician once said: “A foreign language teacher should be an actor. He/she is requested to perform, gesticulate with hands and feet and express the views by gesture, movement, expression and intonation. The teacher who is gentle and cultivated, sit on the platform all the time and not walk round the classroom wont be successful.” The purpose of situational teaching is to place the students in the situations as real as possible to learn English.“Making use of the learning environmental factors such as situation, cooperation and conversation and so on to fully give play to students initiative, positivity and pioneering spirit, and finally to achieve the goal of making students effectively know the significance of what they studied” (Wang Xibao,1996). It will get better results to let students in the specific situations and they would put the knowledge into practice through simulating the situations.To sum up, the situational teaching method bases on the modern psychology, pays much attention to students feelings, and absorbs the advantages of traditional teaching methods. It stands for the developing trend of modern teaching approach. The th